James appeared again just before his afternoon surgery was about to commence and said, ‘How’s it going? I thought we might have seen you at lunchtime. If you remember, I said that you’re welcome to join us whenever you feel the need.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she told him, ‘but I thought you might be feeling you’ve seen enough of me for one day.’
‘I’m not with you,’ he said, and then laughed. ‘Ah, you mean Daisy. Don’t give it another thought. My mother was born and bred in the countryside but she was nervous if they came too near, and she would never go within a mile of a pig sty.’
He was making it up as he went along because he didn’t want this newcomer with hair in a long golden plait and a clear violet gaze to have any reason to regret having moved to the beautiful village where he’d been born.
She’d positively sparkled when she’d seen the new clinic for the first time, but for the rest of it she seemed rather subdued and he wondered what went on in her life.
Yet did that matter? If Lizzie was as good as she was said to be, he couldn’t ask for more and with that in mind he said, ‘Would you be prepared to come back this evening for a couple of hours while I put you in the picture regarding our present antenatal arrangements and pass on to you the medical notes of the expectant mothers at presently under our care, who will be transferred from the surgery to the new clinic?
‘As you know, we are a doctor and nurse short at the moment, with David and Laurel on honeymoon, which means that I have no spare time during the day,’ he explained, ‘otherwise I wouldn’t break into your evening. We could have met at my place or yours, I suppose, but as a matter of protocol I wouldn’t want patients’ records to leave the surgery.’
‘I don’t mind in the least,’ she said immediately. ‘I have plenty of time on my hands. I’ve been going for a stroll and then having an early night, so I’m not going to be missing anything.’
It was there again, he thought. A solitariness that was so different from his own life. He was surrounded by people he cared for, and who cared for him.
If time for himself was hard to come by, so what? The children were happy and healthy, and the pain of losing Julie was lessening as the years went by, yet it would never go away completely because she wasn’t going to see her children grow up, and that was always what hurt the most.
Lizzie was waiting for him to finish what he’d started and bringing his mind back to the present he said, ‘Would eight o’clock suit you? The children will be asleep by then. I don’t think they’ll need much persuasion as the first day of a new school year is always exhausting for everyone concerned, and Helen is there to keep an eye on them.’
He was checking the time. The waiting room was filling up.
‘Yes, eight o’clock will be fine,’ she told him.
‘Right, I’ll see you, then,’ he said briskly, and off he went, hoping that the pride of St Gabriel’s maternity services wasn’t thinking that he was overdoing the getting-to-know-you routine.
As Lizzie walked home in the late afternoon she was wishing that she hadn’t been quite so eager to fall in with James’s suggestion that they meet again that evening. Anything to do with the new clinic was of paramount importance to her, but she felt as if she needed to get her breath back after such an eventful day of ups and downs, the downs issuing from her continuing mortification over the cow episode, and the ups a deep satisfaction with the arrangements of the clinic. Not to mention what had happened when she’d gone to the Hollyhocks Tea Rooms for her lunch.
Emma, the usually rosy-cheeked wife of the partnership who owned the place, had said hesitantly, ‘Is it you that’s going to be in charge of the new baby clinic that’s opening on Friday?’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ Lizzie replied, wondering what was coming next.
‘I think I’m pregnant,’ Emma had said. ‘I’ve done a test that I bought from the chemist and it was positive. So can I come to see you?’
‘Of course,’ she’d said, smiling at her across the counter. ‘That’s what I’m going to be there for. Is it your first baby?’
‘Yes, and we just can’t believe it. We’ve been married a long time and had almost given up hope.’
‘So how about coming in on Friday after the opening and being my first patient?’
‘I’d love to be that! Simon is over the moon. He’s been getting all the recipes mixed up this morning, so watch out for salt instead of sugar in your apple crumble,’ she’d warned laughingly.
On the whole the ups had far outweighed the downs and she wanted it to stay that way, but there had been a slight lift of the eyebrow when she’d impulsively told James that she had plenty of time on her hands, as if he found it hard to believe that anyone could be in that position, and the last thing she wanted was to arouse his curiosity.
She was getting on with her life the best way she knew how, and providing a useful service to the community took away some of the loneliness that rightly or wrongly she didn’t confide to anyone.
But she’d committed herself to returning to the clinic that evening and when she gave her word about anything, she kept it.
The children were full of their first day at school when James came in from the surgery that evening, or rather Pollyanna was. Jolyon was his usual self and his contribution to the discussion was that their new teacher had said he had a funny name.
‘She said unusual, not funny,’ Pollyanna corrected him, ‘and that she thought it was very nice.’
‘It means the same,’ he protested, ignoring the last bit, ‘and why isn’t any other kid called the same as me, Daddy? Why am I not called Sam or Tom?’
Jess had given them their evening meal and was standing in the doorway of the dining room ready to leave, but she paused and said in a low voice, ‘The teacher was just trying to be nice, but as we know Jolly has a mind of his own.’
James nodded and, taking Jolyon to one side, said to him, ‘There was a boy in my class at school who didn’t like his name because he was the only one who had it, but as he grew older he began to change his mind because everyone was envious that he had such a super name and wished that theirs wasn’t Sam or Tom.’
‘What was he called?’ Polly chipped in.
‘His name sounded very much like yours, Jolyon, but not quite. He was called Joel.’
Apparently satisfied with the explanation, Jolyon nodded his small blond head and ran off to play, and as he ate his solitary meal James was smiling at the difference in his children. Polly accepted everything as it came her way, but not so her brother—he had to know the whys and wherefores before he was happy.
When he arrived at the new clinic there was no sign of Lizzie and he thought that maybe she wasn’t the eager beaver that she’d seemed to be earlier, but when he glanced across the road in the dusk to where the ancient village church stood he saw a flash of colour amongst the gravestones that surrounded it and seconds later she was coming towards him through the lychgate.
‘There are some really old graves in the churchyard, aren’t there?’ she commented, and wondered why a shadow passed over his face. But, of course, maybe his wife’s was one of the newer ones, she thought, although she hadn’t seen it if it was. So less said about that the better. Changing the subject, she asked politely, ‘Have the children enjoyed their first day back at school?’
‘Er…up to a point in Jolyon’s case,’ he said wryly. ‘Pollyanna was her usual happy self, but her brother is not so easily pleased. They had a new teacher who apparently commented on his name in what appears to have been the nicest possible way, but he took it to mean that she didn’t like it. He and I had a little chat and it was sorted.’
She was smiling. ‘It is a fact that young children want to be the same